Jaws of Life

“So your top fell off when you were just getting the dog on the beach?”

“Yeah,” Naoko told Tomoko and Shiori as the three of them waited for Kana to come back from work in the middle of the day. “It was really embarrassing.”

“Talk about bad luck,” Shiori added, having been the one who asked the question. “And in front of a boy, too.”

“Shit happens,” Tomoko shrugged. “It’s not a big deal, Naoko-san. What matters is that you, Yui-san, Ayumi-san, and Nojima-san saved that man’s life and his dog. That’s something to be proud of.”

Naoko nodded, admitting, “Yeah, true. I guess it’s not a big deal.”

Shiori pointed out, “So what if he saw your boobs anyway? It was an accident. It’s not like he touched you or anything.”

Then, they saw Kana walk in, having gotten off of work that day. She smiled and said to Naoko, “Hey there, hero.”

Naoko blushed slightly, telling her, “Ah, it’s nothing.”

“Just to let you know,” she then told her as she walked over to her locker nearby to put her car keys inside. “You and the others may get awards for it. The lieutenant on Engine-Aerial 4 that night put a recommendation in for you guys.”

“No shit,” Naoko replied, feeling good about herself upon hearing the news. “Do the others know yet?”

“No, but they soon will.”

Tomoko then asked Kana, “How was overtime?”

“They put me on the second engine out of West Yoshimatsu for the six hours of overtime I did today,” Kana explained. “So I wasn’t too busy. We only ran one call in those six hours, which I’m not gonna complain about, especially since I was on the first-out ambulance for my normal shift and we got hammered with calls. I took a three-hour nap during the day since I barely got any sleep the night before.”

“So now that you’re here,” Shiori then asked her. “What did you need help with again?”

“We gotta go through and replace all the drugs on the ambulance,” Kana explained as she held up a large plastic box full of medical supplies and vials with a clipboard on top. “I got all the supplies while I was at work. It’s a bit time-consuming since we have to go through every single one of these and log them in the system. What I want you guys to do is take all the drugs out of the two medication bags in the ambulance and throw them away, and then I want you guys to write down on this clipboard the serial numbers of each drug before putting them in the bags. Take note of where you take each old drug out, because the exact same new drug from the box has to go in that spot. Understood?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” replied Tomoko with a bow.

“Good. I’ll be in the office for a bit doing some paperwork for the new drugs.” As the three student firefighters took the box and clipboard from her to begin the work on Ambulance 33, Kana walked into the officer’s office and sat down at a computer, logging in and opening up a program to start logging all the new medications and take out all the old medications. As she began to delete the old medications from the system, she felt her phone vibrate with a text, prompting her to take it out and read what it said. She sighed and said, “Alright.” She then dialed Masako’s number in.

“Hey there,” Masako said on the other end of the line.

“You wanted me to call. What’s up?”

Masako sighed and explained to her, “Me and Yasuhiro argued pretty bad today. I confronted him about barely being home after work, and we shouted at each other for a few minutes.”

“How bad did it get?”

“Well, it’s been about two hours, and we haven’t apologized to each other at all. My son is pretty scared.”

Kana sighed, replying to her, “Fucking Hell… Are you safe, Masako?”

“Yeah. It’s not like he’s gonna hit me or anything. We’re just on opposite ends of the house right now.”

“Are you sure? You can stay with me if yo-“

“I’m safe,” Masako insisted to her. “Admittedly, I kinda was a bit of an asshole too, okay? It’s just… I don’t know what I’m gonna do if our marriage keeps going like this. I lost my cool, he lost his cool, and now we’re like this. Kaoru is wondering if his Mommy and Daddy are gonna divorce, and that’s…” Masako paused as she got emotional, holding back tears as she sat in the bedroom she normally shared with her husband Yasuhiro by herself. “It fucking hurts, Kana. The boy’s only eight years old, and I want to stay together so he doesn’t have to go through a divorce, but I don’t know if me and Yasuhiro can if we keep getting worse.”

Kana felt bad for Masako and her son. She paused as Masako began to cry over the phone, letting her vent to her through her tears. She thought to herself, “This is awful. My best friend may divorce her husband. I can’t even imagine how Kaoru is doing right now. I’ve always felt a bit bad about never finding a long-term relationship to settle down into, but after hearing this… It’s giving me second thoughts about settling down.”

“I’m scared for the future, Kana,” Masako admitted. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen if we divorce. I’ll probably be on my own. My parents are of no damn help, because they’ll disown me if I divorce Yasuhiro. They want me to stick it out and submit to him for Kaoru’s sake, but I don’t think I can do this much longer.”

“No, you won’t be. I can help you, Masako. We all can help you.” Kana insisted to her friend, “If your parents are really willing to cut you out if you go through with a divorce, we’ll support you at the firehouse, okay?”

“I’m not saying I’m gonna divorce him. That’s not final, but it’s an option I’ve thought about. With all that going on… I don’t know if I can remain a lieutenant or even a firefighter, Kana. This is draining me of so much energy…”

“You’re gonna stay a firefighter and a lieutenant,” Kana assured her. “I won’t let you slip through the cracks. If I gotta, I’ll drag your ass out here. We’re a package deal, Masako. You go, I go.”

Masako let out a chuckle, amused by her. “You really haven’t changed since high school, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re not wrong.”

…

August 6, 2023

Naoko was at the school pool practicing her diving skills around noontime, dressed in a blue school swimsuit with red outlines. As she looked down at the water below from a ten-meter platform, she took a deep breath and sighed before leaping off of the platform and executing a well-choreographed dive into the water below. As she hit the water, she felt it surround her and cool her down, finding it to be a good relief from the hot summer weather outside, compounded by the walls of the pool trapping it in. As she came up to the surface, she looked around and swam towards a ladder to get out of the pool, but as she did, she saw someone nearby. “Wait, huh?”

Enji was looking back at her, having just walked into the pool through the rarely-used boys locker room, which was often used as a second locker room by the girls whenever competitions were held. “Oh, hey there, uh…”

“Hirayama-senpai?” As Naoko got out, she walked over to Enji and asked him, “What are you doing here?”

“I, uh… I came here because Tamura-san said you’d be here practicing. I wanted to thank you again for what you did for my dad and my dog, Amano-san.” He was also thinking about something else, however. “Also, uh… I want to apologize for…”

“Apologize for what?”

“For seeing you… You know…” He patted his chest with his right hand to symbolize what he meant. “Naked.”

Naoko laughed, telling him, “Hirayama-senpai, you’re fine. It was an accident. If anything, I should blame your dog.” She then showed several scratch marks that had mostly healed on her upper arms and even one on her right leg. “He sure loved to scratch me.”

“I’m sorry about that. He was scared.”

“I know, I know. It’s not his fault. He was scared out of his mind. So, on that note, how’s your dad?”

“He was in the hospital for a day, but he’s pretty much all better now.” Enji then asked her, “I didn’t know you were a diver.”

“Yep. It’s my speciality as part of the swim team. I’m one of three competition divers out of eleven girls on the team. Have you ever been in here?”

“I went here years ago when I was a little kid,” Enji said as he looked around. “My mom is an alumnus of Harukawa Girls’ Academy, and she took me to swimming lessons here when I was like five back in 2010, but since then, no.”

“We renovated the pool about a year after that,” Naoko explained before pointing to a plaque on the wall. “We re-dedicated it in 2011 to an old swim coach who passed away a few years later.” The plaque had a list of names associated with the renovation of the pool as well as a bust of a man who had served as the school’s head swim coach for many years. “Tamura-san’s mom remembers him when she went here, actually.”

“Wait a minute,” Enji then said as he realized a suspicious blank space on the list of names. “Did one of the names get removed?”

“Oh yeah,” Naoko realized. “The name of one of our former coaches got removed. It was Watanabe Norio’s name who was taken off the plaque back in 2013.”

“Why’s that?”

“You don’t remember?”

Enji replied, “Come on, I was like eight and you were seven.”

“They found out he was banging one of the girls on the swim team,” Naoko rather nonchalantly said to him

Enji’s jaw dropped in response. “He was doing what?!”

“Yep. He had been having sex with this girl since 2011 when she was a second-year and he was 25. They only found out right after she graduated in 2013, and they told him to resign or he’d get arrested. He’s lucky they didn’t call the cops on him. They’re married and have a kid now, actually, but they live in Kobe and he works as a swim instructor at a university. No high schools, or any schools with minors for that matter, will hire him for obvious reasons.”

“Holy shit…”

Naoko shrugged as she sat down on a bench next to the pool. “I still don’t get how he was able to mostly get away with it. It’s some sick stuff if you ask me. I also don’t get why that girl stayed with someone who was into high school girls despite being a good eight years older than them, but I haven’t heard of him preying on any other high school girls since then, so…”

“That must have been a nightmare to deal with. God damn.”

“Oh, it was. My mom knew his parents, and they were absolutely horrified. My dad in particular warned me when I got into the swim program here to never get myself into a situation like that with a coach. Even all these years later, it still has a negative impact, even though it was the only time that it happened, at least that we know of, with the swim program here. Even a girls’ school as prestigious as this has its issues, Hirayama-senpai. Some of the girls here might be rich as Hell, but we’re all still dumb kids at the end of the day. When I was a first-year, I caught a third-year girl giving some boy from your school a blowjob in one of the locker rooms.”

Shocked, Enji exclaimed, “Wait, he was from my school?! Western Yoshimatsu High School?!”

“He sure was. I said nothing and just walked by, and no one else knows about it.”

“What was the guy’s name?”

“Uh… Shit, I can’t remember. I know the girl’s name, but not the guy’s name. Her name was Tadano Kotoko. I think she’s in college in Nagoya now. No idea about her boyfriend, though.”

Enji sighed. “You know, I’m not actually all that surprised that someone did that now that I think about it more.”

“Me neither.”

“So, uh,” Enji then asked her. “Do you wanna do something? I’m free all day if you wanna just hang out.” He, of course, prepared himself to get rejected by Naoko.

“Uh… Hmmm…” After thinking to herself for a few seconds to see if she could remember anything she had planned for the rest of the day, she replied, “Sure. I just gotta get dressed, Hirayama-senpai. I’ll be right back.”

As she walked to the girls’ locker room, Enji joked with her, “I won’t be seeing anything I’m not supposed to, right?”

Naoko laughed and told him as she was about to walk in, “Don't worry. Your dog isn’t here to strip me this time. Wait for me outside.”

…

Tomoko and Rumiko were exercising together at the fire station in the afternoon, the two of them lifting free weights together. As Rumiko counted under her breath how many reps she was doing, Tomoko set her free weights down and picked up her phone upon getting a text. “Huh?” As she read the text, she sighed and said to her sister, “It’s more nonsense from the school.”

Rumiko asked her sister, “Oneechan, what is it?”

“The principal wants to meet with the chief and the student firefighters on Wednesday to explain why he wants to get rid of the program,” Tomoko explained. “He sent the Student Council the memo too, since he wants them down there to overhear it.”

“Is he really gonna go through with it?”

“I’m praying he doesn’t. God, this summer’s proving to be one of the worst in my life due to this shit.” She then sat down on a weight bench and sighed before drinking ice water from a sports bottle she took with her whenever she exercised. “I’m gonna be so upset if they get rid of the student firefighter program, Rumiko. You have no idea.”

Rumiko could tell her sister was feeling depressed over the idea of the program shutting down. “I hope they don’t get rid of it.”

“You normally don’t see me worked up like this,” Tomoko admitted to her sister. “But this… This really gets to me. I don’t let my emotions get the best of me, but here, I kinda do.”

“Oneechan, do you want to ta-?”

Both of them were interrupted when the spare pager kept in the exercise room suddenly beeped, followed a few seconds later by the siren going off above them. Tomoko told her, “We’ll talk later.”

As the two of them rushed out of the exercise room and then ran to a fire pole on the second floor near the stairs to slide down it, a dispatcher read out over the radio, “Harukawa Fire Station, Inoue Fire Brigade Branch Four and Branch Two for an ambulance, Harukawa Fire Brigade for a light rescue unit, respond to the area of the Takami Elementary School for a reported motor vehicle accident with possible entrapment. We are getting multiple calls reporting a car versus a van with two patients possibly trapped inside the car. Your time is 1554 Hours.”

Tomoko slid down the pole first, followed by Rumiko. As they ran to their lockers and kicked off their shoes to put their boots on, Naoko also ran over and got dressed. Tomoko asked her, “Wow, you got here fast.”

“I was already here,” she replied. “I was showing that boy whose dad me and Yui-senpai rescued around the firehouse.”

“Wait, him?”

“Hey,” waved Enji from nearby. “So, uh, Amano-san, what do you want me to do?”

Naoko told him, “You can just chill out outside and watch us respond. I don’t know how long it’ll be, but you can’t be in here if I leave since you’re my visitor. I’ll text you if it’s gonna be a long one, okay?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll see you later.” Enji then left the firehouse, which allowed Naoko to respond since she did not have to watch him.

As Tomoko finished getting dressed by zipping up her coat and putting her helmet on, she told Rumiko, “You’re gonna stay back, right?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “I’m not fully-qualified to operate the rescue tools yet, so I can’t get on. I’ll wait to see if they need a third ambulance.”

“Soon, you will be,” Tomoko told her with a smile as she walked over to Light Rescue 34 and opened the driver’s side rear door and hopped in, followed soon after by Naoko.

…

Twelve minutes after being dispatched, Light Rescue 34 arrived. By then, Engine 241 of the Town of Inoue Volunteer Fire Brigade was on scene, as were Engine-Aerial 4, Ambulance 4, and Tanker 4 from the paid fire station in Harukawa, and Ambulance 223 from Inoue was on the way. A crew of six firefighters hopped off, including Naoko, Tomoko, Hiro, Shinichi as the driver, and Masako as the officer up front, with Takahiro sitting between Masako and Shinichi in the middle front seat. Masako told her crew, “Morishima, Okubo, grab the cribbing. Amano, grab the cutter. Lieutenant Washio, grab the spreader.”

As everyone began to grab their assigned tools off of the light rescue unit, Hiro and Tomoko saw a man talking to police officers, clearly disoriented and not fully alert. Hiro then looked over at the accident scene, which had the van on one side of the road and the car on another. “A thousand yen on the van driver being drunk,” Hiro told Tomoko.

Tomoko looked and noticed the driver’s door on the van was open, and putting two and two together with the man talking to the police, she replied, “I’ll take that bet.”

Masako walked over to the car and saw that several paid firefighters were already working around and inside the vehicle, with one of them having maneuvered his way inside to provide medical care to the two patients inside, one of whom, a man, was unconscious and the other of whom, a woman, was sobbing and hysterical. She asked the paid captain standing near the car, “I got my crew getting the tools out now. What do you want them to do?”

“The car’s pretty stable already,” said the paid captain. “So we’ll only need four points of contact for the cribbing as opposed to six. We’ll get the driver out first since he’s out cold. I think we’ll be able to do it with just a door pop to each side. It won’t be anything too crazy this time.” The driver’s side of the car had taken the impact of the van, which had broken all of the windows in the car and badly dented the driver’s side front and rear doors. The impact had jammed the front doors on both sides shut, as well as one of the rear doors, although the passenger side rear door was opened, allowing access for one of the firefighter-paramedics to go in and begin putting both patients in cervical collars and do other forms of care, with particular attention paid to the unconscious driver for obvious reasons. “By the way,” the captain then asked Masako.

“Yeah?”

“Does your fire brigade have a crew for its ambulance?”

“We should. We had a few guys left over when we responded.”

“Perfect. I’ll have Inoue’s assistant chief call them by radio and tell them to come down here to bring the van driver down to the hospital. The police want to draw blood from him for testing. It doesn’t have to be an ALS-staffed ambulance.”

“Let me guess,” Masako said. “They think he’s drunk?”

“Yep, and I think he’s drunk off his ass too.”

Masako then turned to her crew and told them, “Door pop only! Both sides in the front! Four points of contact for the cribbing!”

The assistant chief of Inoue’s volunteer fire brigade, a man in his late fifties, then walked over. Inoue’s volunteers, unlike Harukawa, had black jackets with orange stripes, although they also had the same kind of silver hip boots as them. “You said you guys have a crew for your ambulance?”

“Yeah,” Masako told him. “Emergency mode or non-emergency mode?”

“Non-emergency,” he replied before he grabbed his radio to talk to Harukawa’s station. “Car 20-Bravo to Harukawa Fire Brigade Base.”

“Go ahead,” replied Rumiko over the radio.

“Send Ambulance 33 down here in non-emergency mode. It doesn’t have to be ALS if you don’t have a crew for it. As long as it gets down here.”

“Received. Ambulance 33 to the scene, non-emergency mode.”

Tomoko and Hiro then carried over several wooden blocks and wedges that they would use to stabilize the car, with Naoko going on the driver’s side and Hiro going on the passenger’s side. Meanwhile, Takahiro carried over a set of hydraulic spreaders as Shinichi pulled a rip cord on a gas-powered portable engine to turn it on. The firefighter-paramedic inside the vehicle told the three of them, “Stabilize the driver’s side first.”

“Got it,” Tomoko replied as Takahiro walked over to her side and slid the spreaders under the car. “Ready, Lieutenant?”

Takahiro replied to her, “Yep. Going up on spreaders, driver’s side!” He then opened up on the spreaders to lift the car slightly. When she had enough room, Naoko slid several blocks and wedges under the car in two spots.

Tomoko told Takahiro once the cribbing was in place, ”Alright, I’m good.”

Takahiro then declared, “Coming down on spreaders, driver’s side!”

Masako looked over the cribbing and deemed it safe. “Alright. Looks good to me. Other side now.”

As Takahiro walked to the other side, Hiro could hear the woman on the passenger’s side still crying, saying to her unconscious husband, “Shohei, please, wake up! Oh my God! Wake up, please!”

The firefighter-paramedic inside told her, “Stay calm, ma’am. We’re gonna get him out first and get him to the hospital as soon as he’s out, okay? He may be unconscious, but he’s still breathing, which is a good sign.”

“Going up on spreaders, passenger’s side,” Takahiro then said as he lifted up the passenger side of the car with the spreaders, after which Hiro slid two sets of cribbing in. “Coming down on spreaders, passenger’s side!”

As Hiro and Takahiro got up, Masako looked the car over one more time before saying, “Alright, looks good. Let’s start spreading the driver’s door.”

Takahiro walked over with the spreaders to the driver’s side, with Masako getting right behind him as he made a small purchase point in the crumpled door with the tip before then digging the tool as deep as he could and then spreading the jaws of it wide open. As the jaws of the tool spread out, the sound of crunching metal filled the air. Masako asked the firefighter-paramedic inside the car, “Are you still good in there?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I’ll let you know if you gotta stop.”

As the door opened bit by bit, Takahiro took the spreader out and adjusted his position before opening the jaws up again. As he did, Naoko walked over with the cutters, ready to go to work when needed. Masako turned to Tomoko nearby and told her, “Morishima, grab a rope and wrap it around the door.”

“Got it,” she replied as she went back to Light Rescue 34 to grab a rope.

When she came back over, Masako told her, “Wrap it around and pull as hard as you can.” Tomoko did as told and wrapped the rope around the door from the bottom of it through the gap where the window had once been. Once it was tied off, she began to pull. The door then stopped spreading, prompting Masako to turn around and tell Naoko, “Amano, get in here and cut the hinges.”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” she replied as Takahiro and Masako backed out and Naoko got up close and personal to the car. She then opened up the jaws of the cutters and placed them around the hinges of the door before closing down on them and cutting straight through. As soon as she did, the door came completely loose and Tomoko pulled it away. Naoko then got up and said to Masako, “We’re all set here.”

“Excellent,” she replied as several paid firefighters then walked over to the car with a backboard to slide behind the unconscious driver. “Good job so far. Let’s go to the other side and get the passenger out next.” As she walked over, she looked at the passenger, who was still crying but was also relieved that her husband was out, and told her, “Ma’am, I know a lot’s going on right now, but we’re gonna have you out of here in no time. Your husband’s out and getting put on the first ambulance out of here, and you’re gonna be on the second, okay?”

“Thank you,” she said through her tears. Her face had been badly cut up, and a large bandage had been applied to a wound near her left ear that was now soaked with blood. “Oh my God… I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

“You’re doing great so far for someone who got into an accident like this,” Masako assured her as the rest of her crew got ready to cut the woman out.

Then, the passenger asked her, “Are you married?”

Hearing that question immediately sent shivers down Masako’s spine. She was still barely on speaking terms with her husband after the major fight they had the day before. Taken aback by the question, she replied, “I, uh… Yeah.”

“Me and my husband just got married a year ago,” she explained. “I don’t want it to end like this. Please… Don't let it end like this.”

“We… We won’t, okay?” She then turned to her crew and asked Takahiro, “Hey, do you want to switch out with someone?”

“I’ll be fine,” he replied.

“Anyone else?”

“I can take the cutters for this one,” Hiro offered.

“Sure,” Naoko said as she handed them to him. “I’ll grab another rope and take care of the door with that.”

“Alright. Washio, start spreading the door.” As her crew got to work and the firefighter-paramedic inside began to prepare the woman for her exit from the vehicle, three volunteers from Inoue walked over with a stretcher from their ambulance. Masako turned to them and told them, “She’ll be out shortly. Did you guys get a backboard?”

“Right here,” said one of them, an older man in his early seventies, as he picked up a blue plastic backboard from the stretcher.

“Alright.” Masako then stepped back as Tomoko backed Takahiro up on the spreaders, thinking to herself, “That lady’s question threw me off so much… I can’t let myself get like that. Even with all the bullshit going on between me and Yasuhiro, I have a job to do, even if I don’t get paid full-time for it.”